June / July 2012 Country magazine.
I haven’t done any shameless self promotions in awhile – but this is too big not to mention. You might remember my post about the Janine’s article in an issue of Country Extra magazine this winter. Well that went well enough that they asked Janine to write another article for an upcoming issue of their flagship magazine – Country. This issue was going to feature Alaska.
Fast forward to today – not only did they use Janine’s article in the current (June / July 2012) issue of the magazine, but they used something like 14 of my Alaska photos inside, and this photo from Denali on the cover. Very, very cool!
I have had a few people ask about where they can find a copy. I don’t think it is available in stores, but I think it can be purchased here: Country Magazine once it is available. I didn’t realize it wasn’t out yet.
A cargo ship coated with thick ice, Seward, Alaska.
Although we received some snow this past weekend, today is sunny and warmer with more of the same on the way. Today also marks the arrival of the first cruise ship of the season. I say bring on summer!
So, it does seem a bit odd to be editing images from this past winter. This photo was taken at the end of January – the coldest January on record for much of this area. What you see here is the railing and a walkway for the ship crew. So much thick ice had accumulated while the ship was at sea that this passageway has been nearly completed encased with ice! Fortunately the first cruse ship of the season won’t have to worry about conditions like this.
A stand up paddle boarder surfing the bore tide, Turnagain Arm, Alaska.
The difference between the low tide and the high tide on Turnagain Arm on Monday was an incredible 43 feet! Well 42.96 to be exact. Last year we never did see a tide as low as Monday’s and this year only June 5th will be lower – mark your calenders it could be a great show at a convenient evening time.
When the water level rises that much in such a short period of time, the incoming tide begins as a wave of water sometime 6 feet tall or more. This wave of water is called a bore tide. The wide area of land you see just beyond the surfer was completely covered by water just a short time after this photo.
So given the extreme tide on Monday, expectations were high for a really large wave, and this brought lots of onlookers, surfers and photographers including a photographer from Seward (me).
For some reason a big wave never did form – as you can see here, the wave isn’t even up to the surfers waist. I have seen plenty of bore tides just as big on my drives back and forth to Seward over the years. But, it was a beautiful Alaskan evening!
The Seward Boat Harbor at sunset, Alaska.
This was from last night a little after 10:00 – yes the days are already very long! What a beautiful evening!
Icicles formed overnight on an alder, Chugach National Forest, Alaska.
We have been really busy since getting back home – so much to get caught up on!
In addition, I have been out the last few days on a video assignment. Over the last year I have been shooting footage that will be eventually used as part of a new visitor center film. The most recent request was for me to capture footage that conveyed the transition from winter to spring – not as easy as it sounds. This image is a single frame of a time-lapse showing these icicles melting in the morning sun.
Aerial of Seward, Alaska.
As much as I love to travel, I gotta say after 2.5 months on the road that it is nice to be home! It is sure hard to beat the dramatic, snow covered mountains this time of year!
It should be a busy spring – I already have a fair amount of assignment work piling up – I’m looking forward to Summer!
This is a photo from a couple of Augusts ago – I had hoped to post a new photo of Northern Lights. After a long, tiring day of travel from Arizona to Seward, I dragged myself out of bed at mid-night and went looking for the lights without success – that was painful. So, I’m going with an older aerial for now.
The world's largest fountain, Fountain Hills, Arizona.
We are back in Arizona packing up gear and shipping it back to Alaska for our return home. It has been a great trip, but it will be nice to be home.
I knew before I returned to Fountain Hills that sunset and the fountain would correspond this time of year. When I saw clouds staring to form last night I knew I would have near perfect conditions.
Janine kayaking in a cave on the Colorado River, Arizona.
Thursday, after I wrapped up my time at the NAB Conference we brought couple of friends from back home kayaking on the Colorado River – one of my favorite things to do when staying in Las Vegas!
Since I had photographed this stretch of river a couple years ago, and because all my dry bags were back in Alaska – I decided not to bring my camera. Big mistake! This cave which had visited before looked spectacular – much, much better then before. So the following day (last Friday), Janine and I bought a dry bag at REI and drove back to Willow Beach, rented kayaks and repeated the trip. That was ok with me since it was so much fun paddling on such warm weather.
So why was the cave so much better? Since the temps were in the mid 90′s, the demand for electricity to power air conditioners in Las Vegas has increased substantially. To produce the extra electricity, they had to push far more water through the turbines at Hover Dam which increased the water level a fair amount over our previous visit during the cool month of November Evidently the extra water level is perfect for filling the cave, and that really increases the access to the amazing sight.
I have said this before, but I would really like to do a over night trip on this stretch of river, it is really beautiful. We even saw some desert bighorn along the banks!
Las Vegas, Nevada.
The reflection of the pool at the Cosmopolitan in the windows of a nearby building.
Las Vegas, Nevada.
The fountain show at the Bellagio and the Las Vegas Strip at night from last week.
City Center, Las Vegas, Nevada.
The tram passing through City Center at sunset. This view shows City Center pretty well except the Aria blocks the Vdara.
Scion-FR-S seen during a commercial shot, Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada.
I was in Valley of Fire State Park yesterday shooting a moving 3D time-lapse on a 6 foot ramp when my unique setup caught the attention of a film crew working on a car commercial. I was happy to answer their questions since I had my own questions about their production. I asked if I could grab a few photos of the cars during the filming and they said go ahead – so this is a scene that you may soon see on TV, except in a horizontal format.
This 2 seat sports car will be released this week I understand – it is a joint venture between Toyota and Subaru. Subaru will market it as the BRZ, while Toyota will sell it under their Scion brand and will call it the FR-S. It will sell for around $25,000.
I often think I may have the best possible job out there – but after talking to the professional drivers who were able to race up and down the curvy roads through the park that were closed off by Highway Patrol – now I’m not so sure. 
Update: It will be formally introduced tomorrow (Sunday) at the Long Beach Grand Prix as the marshal car.
Zip-line above Boulder City, Nevada.
This is the beginning of a series of zip-lines that end up at the bottom of the mountain. The end of this zip is on the distant ridge – looks fun!
If you look close you can see a series of trails heading down this hill side. These are part of a series of down hill mountain biking trails known as the Bootleg Canyon Trails. On certain days of the week there is a shuttle that hauls riders back to the top. Add Lake Mead and the Colorado River, and I gotta say, there are a lot of recreation opportunities in this area.
I originally drove / hiked to the top of this mountain thinking it would offer a nice view of the Las Vegas Strip, but it was too far away. It did provide nice views of the town, lake and this zip-line!
Arch, Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada.
When you see an arch in red rock sandstone you might be thinking we took a detour to Moab, Utah and Arches National Park, but you would be wrong. This was in Lake Mead NNRA.
I think there are a lot of undiscovered gems in the seldom visited area. First, the North Shore Road near Lake Mead receives very little traffic. But by turning off that road onto a 4×4 road and the amount of traffic drops to just a handful per day. Then, by pulling over at an almost random location and hiking pretty much assures us of being the only humans for miles. I look forward to spending more time poking around in this area.
Woody Harrelson
I have been in Vegas the last couple of days – I have a film permit to shoot video and 3D video. Well yesterday we ran across a major film production, filming the movie Now You See Me. It stars a lot of famous people and according to some reports will be one of the most anticipated movies of 2013.
Watching the production was fascinating – a very slow moving, carefully planned but well conceived creative process. Nothing is by accident – a casual cocktail waitress briefly passing in front of the actors for example is discussed, modified and practiced before actually filming a number of takes. Every little detail is scrutinized down to the placement of lights – guys were crawling on the floor at one point identifying distracting light reflections off the shiny floor. The production had taken over a large portion of the Aria Hotel and Casino.
One of the highlights was seeing Woody Harrelson. I have enjoyed his acting going back to the days of Cheers – but that isn’t why it was a highlight. What I thought was awesome was how he took the time to greet many of the extras on the set – there were around a hundred! Then he went around and shook hands with the young production assistants who were basically standing off in the distance doing crowd control – class act!
Hoover Dam at sunset, Lake Mead NRA, Nevada / Arizona.
This is from the dramatic new by-pass bridge that routes traffic around the dam. I captured some images from this bridge last year right after it opened, but they were taken during the day – I like the sunset / evening photos from this trip much better.
Janine getting ready to enter the Lovell Wash Narrows, Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada.
I found this location after checking out some of the more colorful areas of this region on Google Earth. This was a cool slot canyon! I included Janine in both of these images to help show the scale of the place, although I have versions of both images without her.
Janine inside the Lovell Wash Narrows, Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada.
Lake Mead, Lake Mead Recreation Area, Nevada.
Sunset on Lake Mead. This lake has sure dropped a lot over the last decade. As you can see we have moved to Southern Nevada and are photographing the areas around Lake Mead.
This was captured on a very windy night. To get enough depth of field to put the entire scene in focus I would have needed an aperture of around f/16 – but that would have lead to a very slow shutter speed and the flowers would have been nothing but a blur in the heavy wind.
So this is actually two exposures – One at f/4 and 1/60th of a second in which I focused just on the flowers. This became the foreground portion of the images. The second at f/14 and 1/5th of a second with focus further back. This became the background. The two images were then combined in Photoshop.
Both exposures were done at ISO 400 and had the same exposure value in that they had the same level of brightness, but this way I could have the flowers fairly sharp and the background.
Great Horned Owl on a nest, McDowell Mountain Regional Park, near Phoenix, Arizona.
What doesn’t show in photos but does in video are two little white puff balls that popped up from time to time – newborn chicks.
As I was driving to this nest before sunrise the past Saturday morning the radio DJ was joking about how he clearly didn’t win the giant Mega Lottery because if he had, he wouldn’t be at work on the radio that morning. I thought to myself that if I had won, I’m pretty sure I would have still be heading off in the morning with my camera to watch a nesting Great Horned Owl – I suppose that is a pretty good sign that you are doing what you love.
Salt River, Tonto National Forest, Arizona.
As unusual as it was to see snow in the desert as we did in Sedona last week – I find it almost equally unusual to find a river, and yet it really isn’t – there are a number of rivers that flow year around in the Arizona desert.
Oak Creek Canyon, Sedona, Arizona.
The beautiful road through Oak Creek Canyon leading to Sedona, Arizona.
Sedona, Arizona.
Looking down on the town of Sedona – not very often you see it with snow!
Sedona, Arizona.
A large winter storm passed through the West this past weekend hitting Arizona head on. The ski areas in Northern Arizona received almost 5 feet of snow – I’m always surprised at how snowy parts of Arizona can be.
The same storm dumped 4 or 5 inches of snow on Sedona – a rare treat! So, yesterday (Monday) morning we raced up there catching the end of the snow storm. We hung around until after sunset capturing lots of images, videos and time-lapses – it really was beautiful!
It looked very different then it did during warmer visits: Sedona, Arizona photos.
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, Arizona.
I thought the patterns created by this plant were interesting.
Moon rising over the badlands of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California.
I hadn’t planned on returning to this location yet again on this trip – but couldn’t think of a better place to photograph the moon then this lunar looking landscape.
This was actually Wednesday night, the night before the actual full moon. The night or two before it is full is the best time to photograph the moon because you can capture it while there is still enough light from the setting sun to light up the landscape. On the actual night of the full moon, it usually appears after it is too dark.
